


Cold November Rain

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A river, hypothermia, and abuse of Guns N' Roses lyrics ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold November Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mtee](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mtee).



It was raining down his nose and throat—in his eyes—but he couldn’t seem to muster the strength to roll over. Felt like shards of ice pounding into his skin, but he figured that it didn’t really matter because he was already soaking wet: already dying. He’d accepted that brutal truth hours ago, when he’d slipped on a pile of wet leaves and gone over the side of a shallow embankment, fetching his leg up against a rock on the way down and shattering it in at least two more places.

His body shuddered—so fucking cold—and he realized that he couldn’t remember his name. _Who the hell am I?_ he wondered, staring up at the skeletal tree branches above him with the rain tangled and beaded in his lashes. It wasn’t amnesia because he remembered other things—snatches of songs he’d heard, a car, the proper way to clean and reassemble any number of handguns.

He remembered someone shouting at him, could almost hear a familiar voice calling his name. He remembered turning and bringing a weapon up—something long and shining, more sword than knife—and then something slammed into his chest and tumbled him over backward. No short drop that time: he’d been standing at the edge of a steep ravine. The thing had shoved him off the edge, and the world narrowed to mud and snatches of sky as he fell. Then came the sudden shock of a thousand simultaneous pinpricks as he went into the river at the bottom of the ravine.

He remembered struggling, trying to swim up and out. Remembered that the water had been fucking freezing, and fast, and that it had gotten into his clothes and dragged him down. Remembered trying to kick off his boots and being hurled downstream against a rock. Remembered losing all interest in getting his boots off or in trying to keep his head above water at all when his leg snapped against it.

Then there was a confused swirl of choking cold and burning agony and the next clear thing was coming back to himself facedown in the mud at one side of the river. Had he been nameless then? He wasn’t sure, but he thought that he might still have had some vague sense of self. There’d certainly been enough left for him to stagger to his feet, despite the fact that night was falling fast and he was soaked, in the middle of some freaking wilderness God knew where, with a broken leg and countless other minor cuts and abrasions. There’d been enough left for him to start trailing the river back upstream, looking for … someone.

Now he blinked, realizing that it was raining on his upturned face. Frowned a moment later as it came to him that he’d already been aware of the rain. He’d considered it before, hadn’t he? Yeah, he thought that maybe he had. He’d been thinking about the rain, and the fact that he was cold and wet and dying out here in the middle of nowhere. Dying alone and unnamed.

There was a sound in his ears, new and sudden, and not at all like the sound of the river, which was running somewhere on the other side of the embankment he’d fallen down. Not like the sound of rain hitting leaves and earth, either. This was … was humming. Someone was humming: a tune that he recognized from somewhere. And then there were words, rough and a little slurred.

“So if you want to love me … then darlin don’t refrain … or I’ll just end up walkin … in the cold Novem—”

A harsh cough ripped out of him abruptly, and the singing cut off. That had been his own voice, then. He was lying here in the rain with death curled inside him, and he was singing a song he couldn’t remember ever having heard before. Cracking up. Going fucking nuts.

“Just hurry up and die already then,” he muttered to himself, and then winced as a fresh round of shivers wracked his body. Not long now. Not long at all.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rain and the river. He was tired, and his only regret was that he was going to die without a name. Seemed wrong, somehow. And that damned song was stuck in his head, running around in circles.

“So never mind the darkness … we still can find a way … cause nothing lasts forever … even cold November rain …”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 _Fuck fuck fuck fuck._

The word was playing in an endless loop in Sam’s mind: a soundtrack to go along with the image of Dean going over the side of the ridge—hell, the _cliff_ —that was also on repeat. By the time Sam had dealt with the Jersey Devil, by the time he’d dashed over to the place where Dean had disappeared, there’d been no sign of his brother. Only the river far below, running fast and swollen from the heavy autumn rains.

It had taken him almost an hour to make his own way down, his heart hammering in his throat the entire time. He’d tried calling for help on his cell, and there was no signal. No help. Nothing but Sam and the river and the heavy rain clouds rolling in and the minutes slipping through his fingers. _Dean_ slipping through his fingers.

Hours of scrambling along the river, shouting for his brother while he scanned banks for Dean’s body— _not dead, not dead, can’t be dead_ —and found nothing. And maybe he never would. Sometimes, people just disappeared, and Dean’s ... corpse … could be hung up on a branch below the waterline, or miles downstream. Could be anywhere.

 _No. He’s hurt but alive, and you’ll find him._ Sam’s breath was coming in harsh pants as he ran through the light rain that had started to fall, and he kept slipping on the layers of leaves. He wanted to believe himself, and didn’t know that he could.

“Dean!” he shouted again, eyes on the far bank. His foot came down wrong in a shallow hole and this time he tripped, sprawling forward onto the ground and cutting his hands and knees open on an assortment of rocks and twigs. He lay there, stunned and cold and hurt, and pressed his forehead into the mud. His hands curled through the damp soil into fists as he fought to maintain the tenuous hope that his brother was still out there—was still alive.

Because Dean had gone over the cliff hours ago, and if the fall itself hadn’t killed him, then there was still the river, only a few degrees above freezing in late November. And the air wasn’t much warmer—was getting colder as the sun inched down toward the horizon—which made hypothermia a very real possibility, if Dean hadn’t broken his neck on the way down. If he hadn’t drowned in the swift-running water.

“Dean,” Sam breathed, and there was dirt in his mouth, and wet leaves, and it tasted like death.

“ … when I look into your eyes … I can see a love restrained …”

Sam raised his head, pulse quickening. That had sounded … God, he had to be hallucinating because that had sounded like …

“ … but darlin when I hold you … don’t you know I feel the same …”

“ _Dean._ ” His first attempt was a whisper, but as that voice—weak and slurred, but _there_ —kept singing, Sam found the strength to try again. “Dean!” he called, pushing himself up to his feet.

The singing faltered for a moment, and then picked up again as Sam darted forward. “ … and it’s hard to hold a candle … in the cold November rain …”

Dean was lying on his back at the bottom of a low hill. He was covered in a foul mixture of mud, leaves and his own blood. Was soaking wet and shivering, his right leg mangled—broken in more than one place, probably. His eyes were closed, his skin too pale underneath the layers of muck.

But he was alive. Alive and singing a sappy Guns N' Roses song that he always said he couldn’t stand when it came on the radio.

“Dean!” Sam shouted, sprinting over to his brother and dropping down next to him. This close, he could see that Dean’s lips and the tips of his fingers were tinged with blue, which meant that Sam had been right about the hypothermia.

“Hey, man.” He pulled Dean up, hugging him close and rubbing his hands along his brother’s arms for warmth. Dean shivered against him, which Sam thought was a good sign. He’d read somewhere that the body stopped shivering in the late—the terminal—stages of hypothermia.

Dean’s eyelids fluttered open and he peered up, eyes vague and unfocused. “Whassit?”

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, which meant that, if Sam was lucky, he could get a fire going. Could warm Dean up enough to get him out of immediate danger. Could dry off their clothes and then get his brother back to civilization. It was a long haul out of the woods, and it was going to be a bitch moving Dean with his leg all torn to hell, but it wasn’t impossible. Hell, right now nothing was impossible.

“I’m gonna put you down for a minute, okay?” Sam said urgently. “Just long enough to start a fire, get you warmed up.”

Dean’s head was heavy against Sam’s chest. “I know it’s hard to keep an open heart, ” he sang softly.

Sam shook him a little. “Dean, are you with me?”

“Fuh-fucking song’s s-stuck in m-my h-head,” Dean stuttered. “And it’s r-raining. Guh-getting me a-all wuh-wet.”

“The rain’s stopping, Dean, okay? And you’re wet because you got pushed in the river, remember?” Sam knew he had to put Dean down and get a fire going, but he couldn’t seem to let go. “Dean? Damn it, Dean, stay with me!”

Dean lifted his head with obvious effort. “Sammy?” he whispered.

“Yeah.” Sam’s relief made his muscles loose in a warm flood. “Yeah, I’m here.”

Dean dropped his head again, his body wracked with painful shudders. “‘M c-cold.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna get a fire going.”

“Okay.”

Sam placed his brother gently on the ground and then dug down into the carpet of leaves for some of the dryer twigs and branches.

“Hey, S-Sammy?” Dean muttered.

Sam didn’t pause in his work. “What?”

“I th-think I b-broke m-my leg.”

He let out a small, half-hysterical laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, Dean, you did.”

“What’s s-so fuh-funny?”

Nothing. Everything. Dean was alive, and he was going to be fine. Sam was probably going to pull all of his muscles carrying his brother back to civilization, but he knew he’d spend the next few weeks grinning anyway. He’d listen to Dean moan and whine about his leg and about not being able to drive, and he’d do it with a fucking song in his heart.

“S-Sam? Sammy? You s-still th-there?”

“Right here.” Sam moved back over to his brother’s side, scooping out a hollow in the leaves and starting to build the framework for the fire. “I’ve got you, man.” Dean settled as much as he was able, rolling into Sam’s side and huddling into the warmth there.

Alive. Dean was alive. Sam worked his lighter with one hand and rested the other on his brother’s shoulder.

“I’ve got you.”


End file.
